TE year2sourcebook/year2 unit1 Introduction to the Unit
Curricular resource creation by teachers has been seen as an important process of teacher professional development (TPD). Using technology for creating is a strong emphasis of this course as well.
In the first year, the student teachers were introduced to resource creation in multiple formats - textual, numeric, image, audio visual - which could be used for creating resources on any area. These tools are not subject-specific. In the second year, the course will introduce student teachers to integrating specific applications for use in teaching learning. The focus is on developing curricular resources for teaching different subjects in higher primary school levels as well as being able to develop skills for evaluating digital resources. In addition to the emphasis on resource creation, the course will also include a focus on developing a critical perspective on technology in education and society at large.
Free and Open Source digital tools are available for creating educational resources in most school subjects, including the 'subjects' whose pedagogies are covered in the second year of the D.El.Ed. course, Mathematics, Science, Social science, Language, Art, Music etc.
There are some significant advantages that are usually available in creating such resources, due to their digital nature. The resource can be edited using the same software by the author and others, to further revise and refine it. The resource can be saved / retained for posterity in your PDL and retrieved whenever required, and shared with others.
Given that the spirit of teaching-learning is to share of ones' own learning, thoughts and experiences, it is important that the resources created are also possible to be re-used and revised by others. Hence any resource created must carry a copyright which allows for such re-use and revision. The Creative Commons (CC) licenses are usually used by the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement and this has been discussed in unit 1 of year 1.
In this unit, the student teacher will learn to create resources for their subjects, (including modifying/revising resources created by others) and share with their classmates, under a CC copyright.
